Race Matters in the Classroom

Wabash Center Blog Series: "Race Matters in the Classroom"

This blog has been started in response to the need for a forum on race and teaching theology and religion in the wake of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown and subsequent protests and police response in Ferguson, Missouri. We have purposively framed the blog more broadly than this single incident.

Teaching for racial and social justice, dismantling the structures of white privilege in academia, and diversifying the faculty, the students, and the canon, are abiding concerns of the Wabash Center and many of our colleagues in the WabashNation.

We invite authors to send us 500 to 750 word essays on this topic for possible posting in this space. Send to Dr. Paul Myhre: myhrep@wabash.edu

We will post blog texts here as we receive and edit them for posting. We encourage you to check this site frequently for updates. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to receive announcements of new postings.

See as well: "Race Matters Teaching Tactics" -- Published by ARTS Online
Nine contributors to the Wabash Center's “Race Matters” blog contribute short teaching tactics they have used to help students engage difference in meaningful ways.

For the last two years, I have taught a required class on evangelism for ordination at the United Methodist Church at Asbury Theological Seminary on the Orlando Campus during the summer and January terms. The course is structured as an intensive class delivered over five days. Over these two years, ...

Shortly after the verdicts in the Ferguson and Staten Island police beating cases led to protests via social media and demonstrations across the country, I found myself involved in two conversations. The first occurred with a car mechanic in Saratoga Springs, the small rural New York community where I work. ...

When and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me. Anna Julia Cooper
Student enters. Looks at me, looks at other students, looks back at me. Is this room 101? ...

My introduction to Old Testament course has served as an experimental site for decentering racializing master-narratives, especially those that have contributed to the marginalization of the Other in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands.
As a Latino biblical scholar, decentering represents an important pedagogical tactic that is shaped and informed by various forms ...

I was horrified to discover that Dylann Roof regarded Asians as inherently racist and thus possible allies to white supremacist causes. That opinion received little media attention, except for spotty clusters throughout social networking sites. And while Roof’s assessment of Asians is nothing short of galling, I also found ...